Gluten Free Hot Cross Buns

Eating gluten free is not a life style choice in our house.  The tiniest trace of gluten makes my husband very sick.  I try to eat gluten free as much as possible because I have arthritis and feel better when I eat this way.  Over the last few years I've got to grips with gluten free baking except for making bread.  I've tried a few times with limited success.  

But today I made these gluten free hot cross buns because it is that time of year and I had a recipe I wanted to try.  

Gluten free breads are usually quite disappointing but these are wonderful.  They have a great texture and taste of warm spices and raisins.  Best of all, each bite feels like proper bread in your mouth.  They aren't even hard to make but they do take some time.  

As with all gluten free bread doughs the actual dough is very wet but I was easily able to shape these with some extra flour on my board and hands.  They took about an hour and a half to double in size and they smelled incredible as they were baking, yeasty and spicy.  

The recipe called for grated lemon zest and grated orange zest but I only had lemons.  This is a Meyer lemon from my garden.  These are a cross between a lemon and those little oranges so the flavor was perfect for this recipe.  I also switched out currants for golden raisins and coconut sugar for regular sugar because those are things I had in my cupboard.

The recipe can be found here on the Gluten Free On A Shoestring blog.  It doesn't require any strange ingredients and I used my own flour blend made from brown rice flour, oat flour, white rice flour, potato starch and tapioca starch.  We ate some with a cup of tea, I've stored some for tomorrow and put a couple in the freezer to see how they fare.  One thing is for sure, they won't last long!